Investigators seek evidence in suspicious fire that burns Oconee home

Wednesday

State fire investigators and the Oconee County Sheriff's Office are still trying to determine the cause of a fire that gutted a home on Daniells Bridge Road early Saturday.

"We've not made a determination that it's arson yet, but it is suspicious in origin," Sheriff Scott Berry said Wednesday.

The homeowner, Jeffery A. Bishop, 54, is currently in the Oconee County Jail without bond, but he was in Athens Regional Medical Center at the time of the fire, according to the sheriff. Bishop was arrested Wednesday, upon his release from the hospital, on a parole violation charge, three counts of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and a battery charge in which he is alleged to have assaulted his wife two days before the fire.

"We couldn't arrest him until he was released from the hospital," Berry said.

The fire was reported about 6:20 a.m. Saturday when a man passing by on Hog Mountain Road saw fire coming through the roof of the home, according to an incident report. The 35-year-old Statham man called 911, then banged on the doors of the house to alert anyone who might be inside.

Responding firefighters found no one inside, according to Oconee County Fire Chief Bruce Thaxton, who said 24 firefighters and eight vehicles responded. Only a garage was saved, he said.

The fire started at the rear of the house, according to a fire department report.

Bishop was admitted to the hospital Friday after complaining of a heart ailment, according to his wife, who was contacted Wednesday.

The day before Bishop was admitted to the hospital, deputies responded to an Athens hospital where Bishop's wife was taken for treatment after she said her husband had super-glued her legs. She said that although they had marital problems, this type of assault was out of character.

"That's not Jeff. He's never done nothing like that," she said Wednesday when contacted at the motel where she was staying.

After the wife was released from the hospital, she said, she went back to the house with a deputy to collect some personal items. The house was in shambles with clothing thrown around and even items in the bathroom emptied, she said.

The wife said she took a few items and was advised by the deputy not to stay at the house because her husband's whereabouts were unknown at the time.

On Friday, the woman said, a person she and her husband know called to say Bishop had been admitted to the hospital with a heart condition. She said she went to the hospital and stayed most of the night with him before going back to her motel room.

Sometime between 10 a.m. and noon Saturday, she said, Bishop called and said, "Baby, it's gone." He then explained someone called him with news that the house had burned down.

Eddie Brady, a 49-year-old Athens man who has known Bishop for several years, said Wednesday that Bishop called him Friday from the hospital asking him to go to his home and retrieve some items.

"He wanted me to go by and get a stool out of the house. That's kind of weird if you ask me. But anyway, the stool wasn't even in the house," he said.

Brady, 49, along with his brother, Michael Brady, who lives in Toccoa, and a 42-year-old Watkinsville woman who lives in a neighborhood near the Bishop home, all went to the house somewhere around 10 p.m., he said. They parked next door, at Bishop's mother's house - where Brady said he began shouting for her to alert her to the fact that he needed to go inside her son's home.

"About that time, here comes two or three police cars, and we're like, 'Damn, what's going on?" he recalled. A deputy told him only that they heard yelling in the neighborhood.

A deputy accompanied Brady to the house to look for the stool, but it wasn't inside the house, he said. "The house was a wreck," he added.

The stool, according to the wife, is a metal stool painted with the numbers 20 and 21, which were the racing numbers worn by Bishop's two sons ­- both of whom died tragically in their teen years.

The next morning, Brady said, the woman who had gone with him to the house called to say Bishop's house was on fire.

The house was gutted, leaving the wife homeless and without any personal belongings, including antiques that had been handed down for generations in her family, she said.

The house didn't have electrical problems, she said, because it was built in 2007 after a previous fire had destroyed the house. She described that fire as accidental, caused by a cigarette.

"I haven't been out there yet, because I don't have a way of going. And I'm really scared to - because it hasn't hit me yet," she said.

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